Hey everyone,
Just looking for some advice, or honestly, even just to see if anyone else has noticed a massive drop-off in how EE treats long-standing customers lately.
I’ve been dealing with a temperamental broadband issue for nearly a decade now, spanning all the way back to my early BT days and bouncing back and forth between BT and EE. (On the mobile side, I’ve been with EE since its conception when it migrated from Orange, so I’m about as loyal as they come).
### The Fault
The problem is it's highly intermittent. It ranges from random total dropouts, to speeds tanking to 1–2 Mbps down or 1 Mbps up, along with insane jitter and ping spikes when my speeds are stable..
Trying to play video games online is impossible—you need a stress ball next to you because your ping will randomly shoot from 35ms to 2500ms and back again. Wtaxh8ng movies is a farce usually grinding halt on a wonderful spinning circle or bluring out to the point its an audio book with pretty colours. Trust me I have tried disconnecting every device, countless new hubs, boosters and extenders ethernet powerline adapters, direct ether cables, wearing a tin hat.. you name it i have tried it.
Because it comes and goes, by the time I get through to the phone team, the speeds have usually stabilized. Over ten years, I’ve only managed to get it "caught" on their end 4 or 5 times. Every single time, I have to go through the same weeks-long process:
1. Book an EE Smart Team/Home Tech visit just to look at my hallway setup.
2. Prove to them it's not my internal kit.
3. Wait for them to finally book an Openreach engineer.
Openreach has only actually turned up twice while the fault was actively happening. The last time they came out, they confirmed the issue was **outside** between my house and the cabinet. They replaced some connectors and mentioned a switch was set incorrectly at the cabinet, sorted it, and told me to see how it went.
### The Current Nightmare
Surprise, surprise... it’s still happening. I’ve been working crazy hours the last few months so I ignored it, but now I’m spending more time at home and trying to get it sorted.
But dealing with customer service now is like hitting a brick wall. The old empathy is totally gone. I phoned up, and apparently, the entire history of this logged external fault is "null and void." Because it looks fine at the exact second they run a test, I’m told there's nothing they can do.
Instead, I got spoke over, condescended to, and read the same script over and over. To make it funnier, I was told:
* My line is unstable because I haven't paid extra to subscribe to a "WiFi optimizer" (I pay for a service, I shouldn't have to pay more just to make it reliable?).
* I should buy a microwave sensor to check for internal interference (despite Openreach literally logging it as an external cabinet issue).
* The issue is actually a "dead spot" between my house and my shed because a security camera out there has low signal. (The camera does exactly what it needs to do, it has nothing to do with my line dropping!).
Last year, EE's grand solution to this ongoing fault was to tell me I could "exit penalty-free" because they aren't providing the service. But since the fault is in the Openreach infrastructure outside, switching providers isn't going to fix a physical line issue.
Has anyone else noticed a massive shift in how EE handles customer relations lately? It used to be fantastic, but now it feels like they just want to pass the buck or upsell you instead of fixing a decade-old line fault.
Any tips on how to get past the frontline script-readers and actually get Openreach back out to finish the job? Don't get me wrong not all call handlers have been terrible however the last 3 I have spoken to have boiled my blood to the point of me leaving... which granted EE couldn't care if a did however the fault will still be present.. the customer service was what has kept me with EE over the many many years hopefully this is a blip not the future.
Cheers.
